Google Analytics Goals as Conversions in Google Ads
Every marketer has seen the word conversion way too many times. But what exactly does “conversion” mean to an SEM? What are Cost per conversion, Conversion goals, Conversions, Conversion rates? Just what exactly are Conversions and why do they matter?
Here we will go over what conversions are, and how you can use Google Analytics Goals as Conversions in Google Ads so that you meet your #ConversionGoals .
A conversion is a completed activity we assign to a user action, it is a completed goal.
Goals measure how well your site or app fulfills your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business. There are five types of Google Ads goals:
Now that we know what Analytics goals are and what conversions are, how do we choose which goal is right for us to track?
Tracking conversions is crucial to success in both SEM and SEO, by tracking conversions you can measure how well your advertising programs: such as websites, campaigns, and ads, etc. are performing.
With a destination goal you can specify the path you expect traffic to take. This path is called a funnel. When you specify steps in a funnel, Analytics can record where users enter and exit the path on the way towards your goal. This data appears in the Goal Flow and Funnel reports. You may see, for example, a page or screen in a funnel from which a lot of traffic exits before completing the goal, indicating a problem with that step. You might also see a lot of traffic skipping steps, indicating the path to conversion is too long or contains extraneous steps. For more
Event tracking goals, is significantly more accurate than destination goals (thank you pages) for tracking events however they require a bit of web development to set up. Event tracking does not run the risk of accidentally being triggered, unlike destination goals which can be counted as conversions even if people go directly to the thank you page.
Tracking duration can be useful for blog and other engaging pages. If you see users are investing time into a page, you can assume they are interested in it and could be a good retargeting audience. However, duration tracking has a fatal flaw. Duration tracking is based on timestamps, so it may not be that accurate. Here’s an example:
Say someone comes to your site:
They visit a page and a timestamp is collected
Then they click on a second page so a second timestamp is collected
By comparing the two timestamps, we know how much time someone spent on that first page. But what if they leave after the second page? Well, we have no idea how much time they spent on page two. Without another timestamp, we can’t figure it out.
This is why you see all sorts of visits with a time on site of 00:00:00. Those people only visited one page so Google Analytics can’t calculate the amount of time they spent on your site. Instead, Google Analytics decides to be pessimistic and assume they didn’t spend any time on your site at all.
Page Screen per Session Goals are one of the easiest to set up because they are also one of the easiest to track.
You simply set your condition: your three choices are “greater than,” “equal to,” or “less than.” Some use cases are “greater than” if you’re measuring engagement and “less than” if you want to measure the effectiveness of your support site.
Hope this blog helps get to your #ConversionGoals and if you are interested in receiving a complimentary audit make sure to check out our website Four15digital.com
Best,
Chris
